For true Mainers, canoe racing season starts even if there’s still snow

...“Is it going to be a dangerous, wet and wild kind of thing? Probably not as wet and wild as we’d like it,” Cross said. “It may be a little bit of a triathlon. You start out canoeing, you may have to jump out of your boat and run a little bit here and there [on optional portages], and then jump back in. And if you don’t do things right, you might swim a little bit, too.”

The 44th Passagassawakeag River Race in Waldo follows on April 1. Cross said that he’s hoping for a bit of help from Mother Nature to make conditions on the Passagassawakeag exciting.

“I’m hoping that it’s going to be crazy wild this year [on the Passy]. We’ve been without a good rain in a while,” Cross said. “This year we’ve got six or eight inches of snow in the fields and a food and a half in the woods around the rivers.”